“Burke shows again that he’s not just a comic genius, but also a fine dramatic writer and storyteller.” – Booklist. “Prose both scabrous and poetic.” – Publishers Weekly. “Proust meets Chandler over a pint of Guinness.” – Spectator. “A sheer pleasure.” – Tana French. “Among the most memorable books of the year, of any genre.” – Sunday Times. “A hardboiled delight.” – Guardian. “Imagine Donald Westlake and Richard Stark collaborating on a screwball noir.” – Kirkus Reviews. “A cross between Raymond Chandler and Flann O’Brien.” – John Banville. “The effortless cool of Elmore Leonard at his peak.” – Ray Banks. “A fine writer at the top of his game.” – Lee Child.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

The Review From The Blue House

God bless the interweb. Back in the day, and in the normal run of things, THE BIG O (being a co-published title with no marketing budget behind it when it first appeared in 2007) might have picked up a few press reviews and then crawled away into a dark corner to die. Happily, and given the ever growing network of bloggers and webnauts that exists among readers and writers, reviews still occasionally pop up. The latest comes courtesy of Rob Kitchin, a fellow scribe who blogs at The View from the Blue House, with the gist running thusly:

“THE BIG O is a comic crime caper – think of Carl Hiassen strained though a noir filter. The story is broken into a succession of short scenes each written from the perspective of one of the six principle characters. The structure works to provide a nice, quick pace and enables Burke to flesh out the characterisation, where each person is slightly larger than life with certain foibles … The only thing that grated after a while was the use of coincidence, which was clearly deliberate but edged towards excessive … THE BIG O is a very enjoyable read and a comic crime caper that is genuinely comic.” ****

Obviously, it’s nice to know that Rob Kitchin liked - for the most part - the novel, and very generous he was too. What I liked about the review, though, is that few punches were pulled, when it would have been easier for Rob to gloss over what he didn’t like and simply emphasise what he did like (full disclosure: I’ve met Rob Kitchin once, and thought he was a nice bloke). He’s not the first to point out that the story of THE BIG O turns (gyrates) on an excessive use of coincidence; and whether that conceit was deliberately intended or not, readers are fully entitled to find it grating, irritating or simply unbelievable. They’re also fully entitled to call me on it. For what it’s worth, I think that that kind of robust critique is welcome and entirely healthy. It certainly beats having him gush about my book and me gush about his (Rob Kitchin has just published his second novel, THE WHITE GALLOWS), an all too common practice these days, and one that serves neither writer nor reader. On an altogether more rarefied level, the venerable Sarah Weinman recently blogged on a similar theme, when she mused aloud about ‘awards fatigue’. The gist of the piece was the proliferation of crime fiction awards (Anthonys, Barrys, McCavitys, Shamuses, Edgars, et al), the difficulty in differentiating one from another, and the overall worth (or otherwise) of having so many awards, all in the context of whether or not the awards are successful in raising the profile of the winning and nominated authors with an audience beyond that of crime fiction aficionados. Both EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O were nominated for awards, bless their cotton socks, so I’m in a position to say that, yes, it’s lovely just to be nominated. By the same token, and looking at the big picture, there appears to be a very real danger that crime writing, even with the very best of intentions, is creating a closed-loop feedback of mutual celebration. In a nutshell - and this is where Rob Kitchin comes in - when everything is good, nothing is good. Running parallel to the mutual celebration is the occasional statement from an author or critic from outside the crime fiction circle, which suggests that crime fiction isn’t as well written as it might be, or is too formulaic and predictable, or too simplistic in terms of form to reflect the complexity of the human condition. The reaction tends to be one of closed ranks, and dark mutterings about snobbery and prejudice, and reverse-snobbery accusations about ivory towers and self-indulgence. In one sense, that’s actually nice to see - it demonstrates the all-for-one and one-for-all nature of the crime fiction community. It’s failing, however, is that it’s a short-term view. All criticism is valid, and particularly when it offers opinions we’d rather not hear. We’re coming up hard now on the centenary anniversary of what I consider to be the birth of the modern crime novel - those collections of pulp short stories that would eventually crystallise into novels by Paul Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, et al - and yet the form, structure, intent and ambition of the crime novel has hardly changed in almost one hundred years. Content has changed to reflect contemporary concerns, certainly, but society, culture and civilisation have mutated in ways that would have been scarcely conceivable even to Jules Verne in his pomp. Is the proliferation of awards doing the crime novel any favours? Are we being honest enough with ourselves as to the enduring worth of crime fiction? Are we too stubbornly closing ourselves off to valid criticism that threatens (and apologies for the tortured metaphor) to prick the bubble of our closed-loop feedback? I’ll be honest with you: I want more from the crime novel. I want more than a response of ‘Oh, it’s the classical Greek structure’ when someone complains about simplicity of form. I want more than ‘Oh, it’s what the market demands’ when someone complains about shallow characterisation. I want more than ‘Oh, the crime novel is traditionally a conservative art form’ when someone complains about predictability. And I definitely want more than ‘Oh, you don’t want to make the reader so much as blink’ when someone complains that the writing wants for challenging prose or narrative conceits. Oh, and I’d also like a week in the Greek islands, preferably paid for by some commercially suicidal publisher who wants to publish one of my novels. Any takers?

3 comments:

Great Post. Wouldn't have thought much about the "coincidence" piece of "The Big-O", but since you bring it up... Sure, it existed, intentionally, as kitchin points out, but I'm in it for the story and entertaiment and could give a rat's arse about a lot of the other stuff.

Just getting into Allan Guthrie's "Hard Man", and I love it, for the same reasons, but that's just my tastes. Then again, I don't read novels based on reviews.

I think Kurt Cobain said something like, 'there will always be a version of The Black Crowes, who are doing The Faces, who are doing The Stones'. The key for me as a reader, is to do it differently and make it entertaining, or I will pull the plug in a heartbeat.

Personally I find it much easier to take a blogger seriously if he/she does find faults with a novel once in a while. With too many glowing reviews I begin to suspect that he is not a very discerning reader.

Hi Dec. I think anyone who reviews has obligations to both readers and authors to be fair and balanced. And that can mean saying things that authors might not like. Where it can get tricky, I think, is that there seems to be an expectation that authors won't criticise the work of other authors. It's a clubby view that I'm not comfortable with. It does seep through a little into my thoughts however when I review Irish authors, as I do want to be as supportive as possible whilst also being true to readers and to my own reading of the book. That can get awkward if I don't like a book, although the one or two I haven't enjoyed so far I've not finished so I've not written a review (I only write reviews of books I finish). Thankfully Irish crime fiction is mostly high quality stuff! Personally, I try to think of criticism as constructive advice that I can use to try and improve my writing. It was a pleasure to review The Big O, and if there is a way of getting Crime Always Pays in format other than Kindle I'm willing to part with cash.

Slaughter's Hound

Absolute Zero Cool

“Among the most memorable books of the year, of any genre, was Declan Burke’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL ... a fiendishly dark thriller that evokes the best of Flann O’Brien and Bret Easton Ellis.” - Sunday Times

Books To Die For

“As good a collection of short essays on crime fiction as one is likely to find.” - Washington Post